Dominic Leung’s Reviews > The Book You Need to Read to Write the Book You Want to Write > Status Update

Finished chapter 10 - Description - Cliches

If we don't, we need to develop what Hemingway called 'the writer's radar.' 'The most essential gift for a writer,' he maintained, 'is a built-in, shockproof shit detector.'

Finished chapter 10 - Description - Cliches

So we have to steer a careful path between the fancy formulations that obscure our meaning and the convenient expressions that render our meaning in ways too obvious and familiar to be interesting. We should know when our descriptions are tired and worn, and we should know when they're unhelpfully elaborate.

Finished chapter 10 - Description - Cliches

One has to respect cliches: they are sturdy so-and-sos. They endure because they are true and because they work; they are useful little devices that we all understand. Yet the term is deroatory, and no serious writer wishes to be accused of cliched writing. There's often something depressing about a cliche, preecisely because it's not saying anything new.

Finished chapter 10 - Description - Preconceptions about style

We should learn to recognise when we've written something that has no function in the text other than to show off what good or clever writers we think we are: we have at this point stopped communicating with the reader (which is our job) and started to indulge ourselves (which is a weakness).

Finished chapter 10 - Description - Preconceptions about style

Literary language for most writers is - everyday speech, but a shapened and intensified version of it; it may also be necessarily difficult at times because what it has to convey is itself inherently difficult. As in all matters related to writing we're looking for balance, we need to be on our guard against dull plain-speaking as aginst over-ingenuity.

Finished chapter 10 - Description - Preconceptions about style

The more difficult phrase isn't merely unnecessary, it actually reduces the impact of the sentence. If your writing will send your readers on a detour before they get your meaning, or even prevent them getting your meaning at all, having put the book down in bafflement or to consult a dictionary, they may not return to it.

Finished chapter 10 - Description - Preconceptions about style

Early-stage writers often seem to mistrust their own voice, perhaps imagining that there must be a voice more appropriate to literature: when they think of what they want to say they try and find some more elaborate way of saying it. But there's no reason to make something more complicated than it needs to be.

Finished chapter 10 - Description - The purpose of description

Be on the lookout for this kind of excess, and work hard to counter it. You will best demonstrate your talents by learning to control them, by using your abilities ina measured way.

Finished chapter 10 - Description - The purpose of description

It's important that descriptions don't overshadow the thing itself. A description can be so overwrought that it crosses the line between producing an effect and drawing attention to itself as an effect. And it can result in desnse and indigestible prose which, rather than giving a vivid impression, impedes clear understanding.

Finished chapter 10 - Description - The purpose of description

Good description adds something to a story: if you feel you could omit a passage of description without detracting from your narrative, you might usefully ask youself whether you can dispense with it.